If we accept it is generally desirable that more of our public land and biodiversity is protected, but that the easier to declare areas are already in the parks estate, further expansion will be at the expense of multiple use public land. More likely than not, further reservation will be at the expense of restrictions on local rural communities, who in many cases will have either been managing local forests or utilising them through grazing, bee keeping or timber harvesting for more than 150 years, with little or no option for alternative income.

In 2005 Don Burke, presenter of the gardening programme, Burke's Backyard, became chair of AEF. He declared "The battle to save the world will be won by co-operation and collaboration, not by protests or the worrying scare tactics used by an obsolete conservation movement to befuddle the public". In 2008 Burke became a special environment advisor to the forestry company Gunns.